---
{
  "layout": "article.njk",
  "title": "Dry Cleaning",
  "date": "2024-07-21",
  "tags": [
    "Standard Mandarin",
    "Sinograph",
    "morphosyllabary",
    "etymology",
    "Proto-Sino-Tibetan",
    "Hànyǔ Pīnyīn",
    "novelty cuisine",
    "food history",
    "U.S. Progressive Era (1900\u20131929)",
    "U.S. Great Depression and WWII eras (1929\u20131945)"
  ]
}
---

{% endomain 2 %}
{% figdomain %}

I recently extracted this customary little piece of paper from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_cookie">fortune cookie</a>:

{% fig "fortune-paper" %}
  {% imgdet "dry-cleaning.avif", "A piece of paper from the inside of a fortune cookie" %}
    <p style="text-align: center;">
      LEARN CHINESE &mdash; Dry Cleaning<br>
      <span lang="cmn-Hans-x-msm" class="serif">乾</span>(<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">qián</span>)<span lang="cmn-Hans-x-msm" class="serif">洗</span>(<span lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">xǐ</span>)
    </p>

    <p style="text-align: center;">
      Lucky Numbers 50, 47, 22, 1, 35, 20
    </p>
  {% endimgdet %}

  <figcaption>
    <p>
      The piece of paper in question!
    </p>
  </figcaption>
{% endfig %}

<p>
  Fortune cookies are not Chinese. At best, they&rsquo;re Japanese, and really, the modern form that we know is an American invention. The transfer in association from Japanese to Chinese (or rather, from Japanese-American to Chinese-American) seems to largely boil down to the gastronomic preferences of Americans at the time (viz. the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> {% gloss "c." %}):
</p>

{% bq "FCChronicles" %}
  <p>
    &ldquo;A lot of Chinese restaurants were owned by Japanese,&rdquo; Stephen said, noting that there wasn&rsquo;t a lot of demand for sushi back then. &ldquo;They opened Chinese restaurants as a means to an income.&rdquo;
  </p>
{% endbq %}

<p>
  The use of English &amp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinitic_languages">Sinitic</a> (rather than Japanese) text on fortune cookies would have to wait until <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans">the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WWII</a>, as implied by an anecdote relayed by Lee:
</p>

{% snip %}

{% bq "FCChronicles" %}
  <p>
    The little slips of paper inside had originally been written in Japanese back then, she remembered. Only later, she recalled, did the messages appear in English. &ldquo;When did they change?&rdquo; I asked curiously. &ldquo;I think they changed by the time we came out of camp.&rdquo;
  </p>
{% endbq %}

{% h2 %}LEARN CHINESE{% endh2 %}

<p>
  A reader unfamiliar with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters">Sinographs</a>, however, may have a hard time telling the difference. Japanese calls them <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji">{% ruby "漢{かん}字{じ}", "ja" %}</a> &lang;<i lang="ja-Latn-hepburn">kanji</i>&rang;
  {% ipa "ja" %}
    kän.zi
  {% endipa %}
  {% ipa "ja", "phone" %}
    k&atilde;&#x320;&#x272;&#x31f;d&#x361;&#x291;i
  {% endipa %}, and although the use of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana">hiragana</a> &amp;/or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana">katakana</a> is a dead giveaway, particularly short texts (e.g. a single word or name) may have few or no <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana">kana</a>. This paper, however, clearly implores the reader to &ldquo;LEARN CHINESE&rdquo;, so let&rsquo;s take a look at what it wants us to read:
</p>

<figure style="font-size: 250%; text-align: center;">
  *{% ruby "乾{qián}{&#x3111;&#x3127;&#x3122;&#x2ca;}洗{xǐ}{&#x3112;&#x3127;&caron;}", "cmn-Hans-x-msm", "cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm", "cmn-Bopo-x-msm" %}
</figure>

<p>
  The use of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin">Hànyǔ Pīnyīn</a> implies that this is {% gloss "MSM" %}. Remember that the Sinitic languages are highly diverse, so MSM is generally mutually <strong>un</strong>intelligible with other Sinitic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)">lects</a> &mdash; and even with some other <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese">Mandarinic</a> lects!
</p>

<p>
  Because immigration from Sinophone regions to the U.S. well pre-dates the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China"><abbr title="People&rsquo;s Republic of China">PRC</abbr></a>&rsquo;s largely successful push for MSM as the dominant language of its territory, Chinese-Americans have traditionally been overwhelmingly non-Mandarin-speaking. Actual statistics are difficult to come by because people unfortunately tend to just use the blanket term &ldquo;Chinese&rdquo;, but still, there&rsquo;s an historical association with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Chinese">Yue languages</a>, especially <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese">Taishanese</a> &amp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese">Cantonese</a>.
</p>

<p>
  This fortune cookie takes, I suppose, a more modern approach. There&rsquo;s just one problem: <strong>it reads the first character incorrectly!</strong>
</p>

<p>
  {% figref "fortune-paper" %} gives the reading
  <i lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">qián</i>
  {% ipa "cmn-x-msm" %}
    k&#x2b0;jan&#x2e7;&#x2e5;
  {% endipa %}
  {% ipa "cmn-x-msm", "phone" %}
    t&#x361;&#x255;&#x2b0;j&#x25b;n&#x2e7;&#x2e5;
  {% endipa %}
  (vaguely like English *<i>chyen</i> with a rising <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)">tone</a>), which <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%BE#Definitions_2">Wiktionary glosses as</a>: &ldquo;first of the eight <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua">trigrams (<i lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">bāguà</i>)</a> used in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism#Cosmology">Taoist cosmology</a>, represented by the symbol &#x2630;; first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagram_(I_Ching)">hexagram</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching">I Ching</a>, represented by the symbol &#x4dc0;&rdquo;, ultimately from {% gloss "PST" %} *<i lang="sit-Latn">m-ka-n</i> &ldquo;sky; heaven; sun&rdquo;. I don&rsquo;t reckon that drycleaning has much to do with Taoist cosmology, so that&rsquo;s probably not right.
</p>

<p>
  Indeed, <span lang="cmn-Hant-x-msm">乾</span> is more usually read as the etymologically unrelated
  <i lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">gān</i>
  {% ipa "cmn-x-msm" %}
    kän&#x2e5;
  {% endipa %}
  &ldquo;dry, dried, arid; [to] dry&rdquo;, which is clearly the intended reading. This is from PST *<i lang="sit-Latn">kan</i> &ldquo;[to] dry&rdquo;.
</p>

{% h2 %}Even <em>more</em> character confusion{% endh2 %}

<p>
  But we probably expected to see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters">simplified characters</a>, considering that their readings are given in Pīnyīn, right? The simplified form of <span lang="cmn-Hant-x-msm">乾</span> with the correct reading is <span lang="cmn-Hans-x-msm">干</span>.
</p>

<p>
  For better or worse, this character was chosen for its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophony">homophony</a>, so <span lang="cmn-Hans-x-msm">干</span> also has readings like &ldquo;concern, be implicated in; (<i>obsolete</i>) [a] shield&rdquo; (from a PST root having something to do with shields or defense) and a few other homophonic or near-homophonic (e.g. <i lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">gàn</i>) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme">morphemes</a>.
</p>

<p>
  Thankfully, the second character is unambiguously
  <i lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm">xǐ</i>
  {% enmark "null-nucleus" -%}
    {% ipa "cmn-x-msm" %}
      xj&empty;&#x2e8;&#x2e9;&#x2e6;
    {% endipa %}
  {%- endenmark %}
  {% ipa "cmn-x-msm", "phone" %}
    &#x255;i&#x2e8;&#x2e9;&#x2e6;
  {% endipa %}
  (vaguely like English <i>she</i> with a falling-&amp;-then-rising tone)
  &ldquo;wash, rinse; clean; redress&rdquo;. Phewf.
</p>

{% h2 %}FTFY{% endh2 %}

<figure>
  <figcaption>LEARN STANDARD MANDARIN (with simplified characters) &mdash; &ldquo;drycleaning&rdquo;</figcaption>

  <div style="font-size: 250%; text-align: center; width: 100%; margin: 0;">
    {% ruby "干{gān}{&#x310d;&#x3122;}洗{xǐ}{&#x3112;&#x3127;&caron;}", "cmn-Hans-x-msm", "cmn-Latn-pinyin-x-msm", "cmn-Bopo-x-msm" %}
  </div>
</figure>

{% en "null-nucleus" %}
  <p>
    Using {% ipa "cmn-x-msm", "morph" %}&empty;{% endipa %} to represent a null (nonexistent) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable#Chinese_model">syllable nucleus</a>.
  </p>
{% enden %}

{% refs %}

{% endfigdomain %}
{% endendomain %}
